Tony Abbott battles the future by axing carbon tax

Tom Arup

The Senate vote to repeal the carbon tax on Thursday. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Australia is in a climate coma. The bitter five-year political tussle over carbon pricing has left us numb and weary of the debate.

The repeal of the carbon price in the Senate on Thursday had been coming for many months - many years really. It was probably a fait accompli the moment bipartisanship was abandoned late in 2009 when Tony Abbott became federal Liberal Party leader.

But we should not underestimate the moment's significance.

The cancellation of the carbon tax was probably inevitable once Tony Abbott became Liberal leader.

A major reform, established in law and largely working, has been rescinded. This is not unheard of in Australian political history. But it is rare.

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So with repeal, what has been lost?

Australia no longer has a hard cap on the amount of planet-warming gases that can be released by Australia's largest companies.

The requirement for industry to take account of the broader social cost of their emissions is gone.

There is no longer an efficient mechanism to meet our domestic emissions reduction goals. Nor one that can also be easily scaled up to meet deeper cuts, the kind science demands to limit global warming to relatively safe levels.

There is no longer an architecture that can endure for decades to tackle a problem that requires a solution to be achieved over that time frame.

And Australia no longer has a long-term emissions reduction target enshrined in law – it was an 80 per cent cut by 2050 until today.

Peel back the edges and the Abbott government's agenda on climate change is bigger than just "axing the tax", and more destructive.

It attacks clean energy. A self-described climate sceptic has been appointed to review the renewable energy target, with the suspicion it will be watered down. The profit-making Clean Energy Finance Corporation is up for abolition. As is the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

A program forcing big energy users to become more efficient with their power use was closed. International aid commitments to help the poorest countries with climate change are sneered at. Independent agencies advising on climate matters have been shut or are in the gun.

And the pretence that we may still seek to achieve anything more than a five per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 on 2000 levels (Australia has long had on the table an option to move to an up to 15 or 25 per cent cut) is largely gone. A government review of targets, both short and longer term, is due next year, but nobody is holding their breath.

To replace all this we are given direct action - a still not fully–formed incentives scheme with limited scope. It is not even second-best to carbon pricing. Hard regulation to cut emissions from transport, power plants and industry would be more effective.

The Coalition's approach to climate change is political management. It seeks to avoid embarrassment on the domestic and world stage by doing the bare minimum and fiddling at the margins.

But what is the long-term plan? Even if direct action can get us to the 2020 goal (and many believe that it can't) what comes next?

The science demands that emissions cuts do not stop in six years. To make the deeper cuts required we will need wholesale reform to the way our energy is produced. How we move ourselves around. How we make things.

Nothing in the Coalition's canon prepares us for this. The fact that some of its excesses have had to be corrected in part by Clive Palmer – a grandiose populist of William Randolph Hearst proportions – is an indictment.

Carbon pricing could endure. Alone it was not a panacea, but it was an effective central pillar to a long-term emissions reduction strategy. This is the view of the OECD, World Bank, the United Nations and many institutions like them.

On carbon pricing, Australia had got itself ahead of the curve, as it has so often on major economic reform. Doing that has always been to our advantage. We restructured ahead of others, lessened the associated pain and got on with embracing modernity.

In the two years since Australia's carbon price came into effect, seven pilot schemes have been launched in China and perhaps the best scheme in the world started in California. Next year South Korea – our fourth largest-trading partner – begins its own national trading scheme.

Instead we have become the first country to roll back a carbon price.

This repeal is fighting against the future. That is a battle that is rarely won.

375 comments

Don't worry about it, people of Australia - it was never really about you. It was just convenient to scare you into thinking your pocket was being picked by the "bogey tax" - thinking back on it now, how much did you notice from the carbon price? That may be a trick question, because when you think back in twelve months to realise that prices STILL go up without the tax, and you never DID get that $550 you were promised, you might just realise that you have been conned by Australia's best snake-oil salesman. But don't be embarrassed - people still fall for the Nigerian scam - everyone wants that pot of gold, only this time it's going to the big end of town.

Commenter

BC

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:07AM

Thank you Prime Minister - finally we are rid of this stupid useless plague of a tax which did nothing more than assault our pockets! Well done & congratulations to all the independent senators who have taken a stand against the unionists and socialists that are the modern day Labor/Green parties.

Commenter

happy days

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:28AM

Abbott continues to deliver on his promises by removing this con of a tax which was introduced via the biggest lie in Australian poetical history.

Commenter

Edg

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:28AM

Exactly!Compared to the Coalitions GST, the CT is a pittance for household living expenses. I'd like to see what the GST is costing families every year. Just check the electricity bill for example.Do you think anyone except corporations polluting will even notice the CT is gone? The Abbott/Murdoch govt has a small victory that wont benefit many voters who will entitled to ask why.

Commenter

Oldfootyhead

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:29AM

COALition = Fossil Fools.

Commenter

Toxic Tony

Location

Straya

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:31AM

What a day of shame for the Australian people led by a luddite govt on a ship of fools. not one of them understands the science and I would be hoping for a commission to look into Coal holdings by the coal-alition members perhaps a conflict of interest here? Hmmm ALways up for a good conspiracy theory.

but yeah great day of shame... Hang your heads Australia

Commenter

BarbC

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:40AM

Happy days and edg......London to a brick, we won't see any change to our cost of living, unless the budget measures come into effect....then we will see a big change to all our bottom lines.

At the ballot box I didnt see Vote 1 Muppets...I must have missed it as they got in alright!

Commenter

shemp

Location

melb

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:46AM

Congrats to PM Abbott and Team in getting rid of carbon tax and stopping the boats.

Next get rid of RET and CEFC all mirages in the war against global warming.The only relevant Performance Index to measure any policy is Annual GLOBAL TOTAL CO2 EMISSION. Australia’s annual CO2 emission is a small and fast diminishing component of this index.

Why have almost all the professors and other academics who claim to be experts in policy making to fight global warming not realize the failure of their assumptions in defining policies for the Greens and ALP? Sadly so. Ah yes all the Wall Street Executives also failed to understand that the assumptions behind the Li Copula Maths formula which was used to value trillions of dollars worth of shonky derivatives were invalid. Reality caught up and created GFC.

The logical cost effective strategy for Australia to fight global warming is to do joint R&D;with China and India in nuclear energy and renewable energies with the aim to moderate the CO2 emission of these two Asian giants with rapidly increasing CO2 emission. Australia should do NOTHING within Australia. We have been distracted by feel good moral hypes from the Greens and ALP hypes from the Greens and ALP.

A measurable amount of China’s CO2 emission is owned by Australia. We buy lots of goods from China and CO2 are emitted in making them. We export lots of coal and iron ore etc which produce CO2.

Commenter

Dr B S Goh

Location

Australian in Asia

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:47AM

You leftys are a joke! All you do is complain...about everything.

Saying that the carbon tax didn't really cost the average punter 'that much' is a totally ridiculous argument. It was a tax on business, that didn't lower emissions much at all.

You people bitch about the gov't cutting your precious welfare payments and free services but the carbon tax price increases were ok....save me!

Commenter

Paul

Location

brisbane

Date and time

July 17, 2014, 10:48AM

@EDG: "Abbott continues to deliver on his promises by removing this con of a tax which was introduced via the biggest lie in Australian poetical history."

The biggest lie? That's a big call. And, even it it were true, Abbott himself has trumped it with his actions.

While I have never agreed with carbon pricing (it's a neo-liberal method of tackling climate change and will put the greatest burden on those least able to bear it), Abbott is attempting to introduce something even more retrograde. He calls it "Direct Action". I call it a handout to the Big Business constituency of the Libs and the farming contituency of the Nats. It won't achieve its ostensible aim, but it's not designed to. Rather, it's just about transferring public money into the pockets of vested interests. If the Senate blocks it, as looks probable, it will be doing the public a favour.

At bottom, capitalism is unsustainable. It relies on perpetual growth, the ideology of the cancer cell. We need an emergency program of transition to 100% renewable energy, part of a complete decarbonisation of the economy by 2030. To get there, we need to abolish capitalism.